Ministers must start to link their concern about security with trade policies and aid and development issues.
As I said at the beginning of my remarks—I speak as one who has been a Member of the House since the mid-1980s—there is no question but that the region has, although not through the fault of any particular Administration, gradually slid down the agenda of Her Majesty’s Government. We can see that. People protest and talk about the UK-Caribbean Forum. That is very nice. They talk about visits by junior Ministers—it is always a treat to have such a visit—but we can see that the region has slid down the Government agenda when we look at the institutional arrangements in DFID [the Department for International Development] and the Foreign Office for dealing with the Caribbean.
. . . Let me say this on the dangers of fragmentation: most people in the Chamber may not remember or have learned about the history of the West Indies Federation, but when Britain sought to oversee the move to independence of different Caribbean islands, the original idea was that they should form part of that federation, because it was clear all those years ago that individual islands and dependencies would find it difficult to impact on international institutions, let alone the British Government.
Those countries, led by Jamaica under Alexander Bustamante, resoundingly rejected the idea of the federation, but as we move into the twenty-first century the islands of the region need to act more collectively and to have a common view on issues . . .
The region is building and reinforcing its common institutions and is trying to take more of a common view on issues. Here in Parliament, it is wonderful to have a multiplicity of groups, but in the context of making an impact on Ministers, the more that we can move together in a common organisation the better.
It is regrettable that the region has moved down the Government’s agenda, but it will never move down the agenda in the hearts and minds of those of us whose parents and grandparents came from the region immediately after the Second World War. I constantly urge diplomatic representatives here to do more to harness the passion and concern of the Caribbean diaspora because, as well as building up the parliamentary work, that would be an important weapon to help the region.
On the weekend of Hurricane Ivan, I remember sitting with friends watching the news bulletins hour by hour. We all had friends, family and villages of which we were thinking. I would like to see a time when the institutional arrangements in DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the funding, the concern, and the approach to trade matters reflect in their understanding of Caribbean issues the genuine love and concern that so many of us have for the region.
Candace Allen
Born and raised in the northeast US, she has lived in London since the 1990s. She is the author of the novel Valaida (2004) and of Soul Music: The Pulse of Race and Music (2012) and a freelance contributor to The Guardian and the BBC World Service. She came to writing after 20 years working as an assistant director on feature and television films, and later as a screenwriter. She was a founder of Reel Black Women, a professional organisation for African-American women in film and was the first African-American woman to be a member of the Directors Guild of America. “That First Night in Accra” is from a novel-in-progress.
That First Night in Accra (1974)
(Part of a work-in-progress novel)
A Friday night, some three weeks after she’d arrived. Hot. Hot that screamed for hammocks and frosty lemonade, which weren’t to be had, or regular water pressure for showers or regular electricity for fans, so what she’d done was adjust: discarded the New York shoes that were constantly filling with sweat, cut back her billowing ’fro. Since her arrival Ghana had been about adjustments, some of it annoying, most of it exciting, but all of it simply prelude.
For Alex Walker, Ghana wasn’t the Motherland of myth and recent discovery, nor the inspiration of prideful identity that had been spine to her college years. So single-minded was her attention to her goal that mere surrounding white noise black noise? had been this country, this continent, this city, until, after almost two years of nothing more tangible than constant, obsessive, heart-rending and confusing thought, the reason for her entire being stood right across the room.
The tiny club full to bursting. Spirits high to the Afrobeat, psychedelic funk that had been the unexpected soundtrack of her last three weeks. Everyone wanted to be James Brown, it seemed, stomping and grinding down the house rather than elegantly swaying to the Highlife sometimes played at civil rights-oriented parties in the early ’60s to raise funds in Westchester County for all those valiant freedom-fighters way down South. Even her Daddy pulling himself upward, swaying his hips slowly to those pride-filled beats, but all eyes on her Mama, undulating with the grace of a gazelle and Alex wanting so much to move with such grace, to receive such admiring regard if only just once. Pretty please, God, just the once? Alex could see that David knew people in the club as he greeted brothers and bartenders with handshakes and nods, ignored the courtship displays of several sisters, to stand alone, Coca-Cola in hand.
His hair was neat, clipped far shorter than it had been at school, no beard, an irregularity in his right cheek she hadn’t seen before. More beautiful even than her memory of him. The club’s small yellow bulbs reflecting round his brow like a halo. Dressed in form-fitting grey slacks and an open-necked cotton shirt not bought at a market stall, the cut too perfect, the fabric too fine.
She inhaled somehow, exhaled as well, without drama, steadying her nerves. She’d travelled more than five thousand miles for this moment, but she hadn’t made a beeline. Starting with her roommates, Emma and Akuwe, she’d danced. And he’d watched. Like folk had always watched her Mama. She felt rather than saw him watching, all the hairs on her body antennae processing his every move. He’d danced once with a persistent admirer then stopped and watched some more. They’d let the room’s ebbs and flows move them together. It took less than one hour but more than a half. Long sessions with Akuwe and Emma had prepared her for this night.
“Think Pam Grier, Alexandra! ‘They call her Coffy, and she will cream you!’ Yes? You are a warrior. Do not waver! In your veins runs the blood of market mamas, the true queens of Africa, my sister, who can conquer all manhood with the quiver of one buttock!”
Four years Alex’s senior, Akuwe was unconvinced that any man was worth all this trouble, but she and Alex had bonded during their bibliographical hours. Akuwe was very pleased that Alex hadn’t come to Ghana trying to be African. It was all Akuwe could do not to spit on the sandals of Negro Americans on their pilgrimages to the Motherland, thinking and playing they were “African”.
“It might as well be Halloween! Mixing Yoruba and Fante into fairy tale characters; and the drama at the slave castles! Yes, it’s difficult this history. I don’t deny it’s difficult, but please, a friend of mine, a tour guide, told me that just last week some man tore off his shirt, tried to bar all white people from entering then bring the building down like some deranged Superfly Samson. If the Good Lord was watching He was having quite a laugh.”
Alex wasn’t like this. Alex had a purpose to her journey, as Akuwe had had her purpose in braving the snows of Indiana for higher education. “Among ignorant peasant farmers who thought me some form of lower ape. You block their foolishness out. You get what you came for.” Alex had come a very long way to get this man, a display of stamina that Akuwe admired, and she wanted Alex to win. Pink-petal-cheeked, Emma was more the romantic, but a practical one who’d learned, the hard way, that doormats invite foot traffic.
“Akuwe is right, Alex. You’ve been here three weeks and not hunted him down. He works for Slocumbe so he knows that you’re here. Your not pounding on his door and flinging yourself at his feet will have confused him. And remember, you are beautiful! What I wouldn’t give for those legs of yours and that neck! He will see you and he will surrender!” followed by an embarrassed giggle with which Alex had empathized far more than had been useful.
She’d managed h
er heartbeat with the dance. Much of her adrenalin had been pumped out with perspiration, not all but enough that her hands were reasonably still, her eyelids not twitching. When she and David were finally face-to-face she’d maintained a steady gaze. Emma and Akuwe had melted away.
They’d done without the superfluous intros. There’d been none of that “You? Here?” nonsense. They both knew why she was there.
“Hello,” he’d said. Without a smirk, without the sense that he was doing her a favour just by speaking to her, with pleasure, understated but undeniable. He’d been happy to see her, and surprised at his happiness. It was not her imagination. It was real. She could see this.
“Hello,” she’d replied. Thirsty after all the dancing her eyes had fastened onto his bottle of Coca-Cola, a distraction in aid of her poise.
“Take it,” he said. “I’ll get a couple more. Should they add rum?”
“Yes, please.” She could feel her new friends’ barely suppressed cheers and guttural admonishments somewhere beyond her to the right, but she’d ignored them, turning instead to look at the open door, even her breath, keep her heart from smashing through its cage. She’d felt at once that her senses were on high alert yet much around her was behind a veil. When he’d returned with their drinks he’d nodded towards the door.
“Shall we?” he’d asked.
“Good idea,” she’d replied.
Outside, Accra. Bodies milling in limited light, music, not just from the club, from tinny transistor radios of various sizes, a live band across the street, another but one street away, all the beats complementary somehow. Voices keying upwards in celebration of a night’s promises good and bad, the smell of kabobs and wood smoke, diesel fuel and human funk. Clean for the most part, for a night on the town, but sweating bodies without deodorant, in loose cotton garments, minimal body hair, slightly acrid; with an overlay of overripe everything including bodily wastes. The drink generous and the rum ramming into her stomach like panic.
“You know the bartender?” she’d asked.
“I’ve been here a time or two,” he’d replied. “You need a cushion?”
“I better,” she’d replied. With a smile that did not quiver.
The kabob seller’s broad grin was missing three front teeth, with the rest more yellow than white. “You not from ’round here,” he’d said, looking her way after David made the order.
“Is it so obvious?” she’d asked.
The seller’s nod and all his movements were at one with surrounding beats. “Yes, but you are very welcome, my sister! Where you from? New York?”
“Yes, New York. How’d you guess?” she’d said laughing. How wonderful to laugh with David at her side.
“Because you got the flare, my sister! You got the style! ‘New York, New York. The Big Apple!’ The Last Poets, we know them here, very wise, very wise, and you one lucky man, my brother, to have a New York sister like this!” and as he handed over the kabobs, “Very welcome home!” Moving off to allow the seller to serve the clean-cut white man waiting behind them, for the first time, Alex felt maybe that might be true.
The eating of kabobs delayed in-depth conversation, that and the enormity of being in his presence at last. Alex had felt calm when there was no precedent for calm. A snippet of T.S. Eliot flit in and out of lamp-light, the sense of being in and out of time. Because in all the world Alex was where she wanted to be. That moment, standing in the street across from the Club Ambassador, that first moment of feeling with him, of having achieved more than at any previous second in her entire life by getting here to his side; far more than the academic fluency that took her to the College, far more than the painting with which she had won a state-wide competition her high-school junior year, far more than the diploma that to some was a prize to frame and display but for her was lying unperused on a dusty shelf in Harrison, New York; and the wall about him almost permeable.
She’d smiled into that space, not at him, and felt only barely a dollop of kabob juice rolling down her chin. David had produced a handkerchief. Her hands had been full with kabob and drink; but he’d managed to clean her chin. Softly. The magic in the touch rather than the prestidigitation. Her heart now tugging wildly and never-before-seen questions in his eyes. “So, it’s really you here?” “Did I ever really see you before?” Her lungs on fire, expanded to explosion, she wanted to throw her arms around his neck, wanted to scream; but sense told her that any acknowledgment of this change in his eyes would cause it to flee forever. She’d cooled the fire with rum and Coke. “Are you ‘very welcome home’ here?” she’d asked.
“It’s where I am,” he’d replied, “where I could go and where I am.” He’d nodded towards the club. “You want to go back in?”
“I’ve danced enough,” she’d said.
“Your friends?” he’d asked. She’d shaken her head and he’d summoned a taxi. They didn’t touch or speak in the ride to his small bungalow, allowed the sounds and smells of Accra to burnish the fullness between them.
His bungalow was set back from the street. Banana trees muffled the night sounds of modern Accra but the switches and coos of its nature remained. Where his off-campus apartment had been a chaos of books, posters, record albums and scattered clothing, he now lived in another style entirely: immaculately clean, spare of objects. A table with a lamp, a well-made bed. Nothing on the walls. A few books, The Invisible Man, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, some detective novels in French, Fanon in both English and French, an English-French dictionary, what looked to be scientific tracts on mining; a small cassette player, a few tapes: some Miles, Cecil Taylor, his Ornette Coleman, of course.
Ornette Coleman had seemed more noise than anything else at school. She’d never been able to distinguish Ornette’s ups from his downs, but in this sparse bungalow Ornette was making far more sense and, standing in that small space out of known time and place, the music’s questing and weaving projectiles were sounding absolutely right.
He’d opened the few windows to release some of the day’s stifling heat, taken a beer and a Coke out of a cooler. She’d pointed at the Coke but rolled its bottle across her forehead before taking a drink. He’d approached her from behind and done the same with his beer along the nape of her neck, causing her to gasp. He’d turned her around and kissed her gently. They’d swayed a bit to the rhythms beneath and between Coleman’s notes. He was wearing a ring that she hadn’t seen before, heavy, African. She could feel the pressure of its form on her back beneath his hand, the ripple of his muscles beneath her hand; then he’d taken away her Coke, placed it carefully on a counter.
A different man.
The David Prescott she had followed to Accra had never cared about her pleasure before, nor had she considered her satisfaction a priority. If truth be told, she had been unsure what pleasure meant, the vague stuff of love songs, lascivious comments, embarrassed giggles, nothing concrete, let alone liberating, nothing that she’d known she needed, nothing she knew enough about to want. Who was this man who had trembled as he’d plied and explored her, who’d rested his cheek against hers with care that she didn’t smother? A different man, this David. Perhaps a man who needed her? As he never ever had in school . . .
Yaba Badoe
A graduate of King’s College Cambridge, she worked as a civil servant in Ghana before becoming a general trainee with the BBC. Her debut novel, True Murder, was published in 2009. Her short stories have been published in Critical Quarterly, African Love Stories: An Anthology (2007) and Short Stories: Southern African and Beyond (2009). She is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose credits include The Witches of Gambaga (2010) and The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo (2014). She was nominated for a Distinguished Woman of African Cinema Award in 2014.
Aunt Ruby and the Witch
I’m listening to the radio. An old woman on my favourite FM station is swearing that she had just embarked on her night travels—a round trip from Accra to Kumasi—when her magic failed and she plummeted to the ground
. “That’s why I am standing here naked, young man. I was caught out.”
“How long does the journey usually take you, Nana?”
“In the spiritual realm, Accra to Kumasi is no time at all. Not like in the old days, when the train took three hours at least. In the spirit, I’m there just like . . .” The old woman snaps her fingers.
I turn the volume of the transistor radio up and imagine the eyes of the cub reporter widening at his scoop: a woman, a self-confessed witch, marooned on a roundabout in Osu. And he, the first reporter on the scene, is interviewing her.
“Ask her which asylum she’s escaped from,” I prompt him. “Offer to escort her home.”
He doesn’t.
“Now, if the train were still running,” says the old woman, “I’d take it to Kumasi to visit my sister. But with things as they are, what am I to do? No money for tro-tro or state transport. I have no choice, young man, but to go from place to place the only way I can.”
“But, Nana, witchcraft is evil.”
“Then, for my sake, petition the President. Tell him to mend the railways so I can use them again. Have you ever been on a train, young man?”
“No, Nana.”
“Not even the link from Accra to Tema?”
The young man sighs. He’s too young to have felt the surge of an engine as it hauls carriages over tracks; too young to have seen the foliage of rain forest as it clambers overhead. The first time I saw it—a forest thick with trees I could not name—unable to see the sky, I marvelled as the train snaked through shadows. Bark slithered past my eyes: leaves, creepers and never-ending trees.
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